Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

Yes, it is probably harder. I hope the legislation on political funding to be introduced by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, will deal with it. However, I have a view that including something in a law is not necessarily the best way of dealing with it, but who am I but a small fry.

I want to address the amendments specifically because people have spent much time speaking on them. During the Second Stage debates in the Dáil and Seanad, arguments were put forward in favour of the introduction of constituencies with a greater number of seats. I must defer to Senator Mooney's historical review on constituency size which was excellent. Constituency size has been restricted to three, four or five seats since 1947. In broad terms, this strikes a reasonable balance between the considerations involved.

Arguments were made in favour of the maximum degree of proportionality in the ratio of seats to votes and I understand these arguments which are valid and well made. However, issues are raised about the practicality of constituencies larger than those we have at present. All Oireachtas Members are concerned about the alienation of citizens from politics, and this issue was raised during today's debate. We agree on the need for greater connection between the people and our parliamentary and governmental systems at national and local level. However, I am not sure constituencies with populations of up to 180,000 people, as would occur in a six-seat constituency, are the way to go. One of the successes of our electoral system is the retention of close links between elected Deputies and their localities. This is a circular argument because this brings us back to clientelism.

I will not argue with Senator Cullinane but many of my people left in the early 1950s and I am glad to say that no matter where they went, they still speak with broad Westmeath accents. However, they hardly know who their MP is. A counterargument to the point made by Senators Mooney and Wilson is that MPs have surgeries with staff and nobody knows them. It is different to here and I take the point that in the UK system is more defined by one's party allegiance to either the Conservative Party, the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats than here where in the PR system one could vote for Sinn Féin or the Labour Party and also vote for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. One could write a thesis on this and we will not resolve the issue. Nevertheless, the contributions are well made. Perhaps this is why MPs are less well paid; they do not have to take part in ground level hurling to use the analogy used earlier. They deal with legislation, and perhaps that is the system they have. Some day our system will probably move to this if the people allow it, and that will be the question.

If the media say something it is the be all and end all.